Unentangling "Material Moments" in Learning Science

• In Event: Innovations and New Directions in Methods and Frameworks for Learning

Abstract

Material feminism offers a unique theoretical framework for science educators because it moves
theorizing and analysis from the post modern that focused solely on language/discourse critique
to re-engaging with matter/material (Barad, 2007; Hird, 2009). However, we also acknowledge a
challenge of introducing and incorporating a theory into science education research that has
emerged from discussions about the limitations of epistemology given the characterization of
science education research as primarily focused on knowledge production in teaching and
learning (Authors, 2013) as masculine and politically conservative (Lemke, 2011), and having
sporadic engagements with post-structuralist theories. Barad (2007) uses
entanglement to note that ‘matter and meaning are not separate elements’ (p. 3) which examines
how entities come into being through the intra-actions between them, and those intra-actions
produce material-discursive practices. This paper will utilizing Barad’s diffractive methodology to the intra-action between matter’s agency and science learner’s bodily practices. As a methodology, diffraction generates different patterns and thus leads researchers to new knowledge considers the material consequences and the consequences of the material in framing and analyzing the research (Lykke, 2010). To illustrate how can produce different knowledge by using a series of agential cuts on one preservice science teacher’s perspective on learning science. Our intention is to describe and use key Baradian concepts of intra-activity, agential realism, phenomena, apparatus and materialdiscursive practices to identify if there are “material moments”, that produce gendered pedagogical practices, with an assumption that practices are central to material feminist praxis (Barad, 2007, 2014; Taylor, 2013). When asked to recall learning science in school a preservice teacher wrote the following: ““In lower secondary school science immediately became more boring. In biology class, we would just sit indoors and watch the stuffed birds and listen to recorded birdcalls instead of going out and look and listen. Often the teacher just stood at the blackboard and wrote, and we would copy what he wrote. [...] In upper secondary school, it became even harder and even more boring. Then we were also just sitting still. We never got to be outside and look at things, instead the teacher followed the text book to the letter, because it was what was going to be on the test, instead of teaching us what we ought to know for the test by being out and observe and discoverfor ourselves.” Using a series of agential cuts when analyzing the quote we illustrate the entanglement of space (indoors, outdoors), time (lower secondary school, upper secondary school), and matter (stuffed birds, recorded bird calls, blackboard, textbook). Then re-turn to spacetime, spacematter, timematter and spacetimemattering. Questions that these analysis generate are: What are the implications for entanglement of the teacher located near the blackboard and the space that this intra-action unfolds? How does students’ schooling history, such as the progression through grades mark time on students?

Author

• Kathryn Scantlebury, University of Delaware